AUSTINTOWN — Fiscal matters continue to plague the township, and even as officials say they are trying to tighten their belts, the hits keep coming.

At Monday’s meeting, Austintown Township trustees approved a motion to pay out more than $136,000 in accrued time severance to the current and former police chiefs.

About $123,000 of that went to former chief Robert Gavalier, who retired after a 44-year career in February. The other $13,300 went to his successor, Chief Valorie Delmont, in a move that Township Administrator Mark D’Apolito said will save money in the long-term. D’Apolito said the department this year has paid a total of about $219,000 in severance to the two chiefs and other officers who have left the department, including Capt. Tom Collins, who retired at the end of March.

D’Apolito said the large payout to Gavalier was the result of his inability to take a lot of his paid time off during a lengthy career.

“That happened over his entire career. For example, a lot of it happened during the COVID years when he didn’t take much time off,” he said. “In a township our size, most of our department heads don’t have extensive assistant department heads or backups so it can be hard to actually utilize your time off.”

D’Apolito told trustees that sustaining the police department is the largest expense the township’s general fund incurs, and that this year an advance — which will likely become a full transfer — of about $850,000 to $1 million is already in the works.

“However, to date, when I compared the first quarter of 2025 to the first quarter of 2024, we’re down about $55,000 in expenses after you remove the one-time severances that occurred,” he said. “So that’s promising. Chief Delmont has only been in the position for a short time (one month), but she’s made some operational changes that will result in some savings.”

One of the cost savings D’Apolito attributes to Delmont is that when the township negotiated her contract to become the new chief, she agreed to cash out the leave time she had accrued as a member of the police union’s collective bargaining agreement.

By cashing out the administrative time balance, Delmont will not accrue that time in addition to the time that is due to salaried administrative township employees like police chiefs.

Delmont said she also has made some other strategic cuts to operations in the department.

“I can tell you we’ve cut back on all overtime in all divisions, and we’ve limited any training from outside,” she said.

Delmont said officers now complete all in-service training on the clock.

“We’ve also just taken a look at the small things, like our contracted services, and cut back on those. We have our officers take care of their own workspaces to cut down on cleaning costs,” she said. “Nothing that’s changing the appearance, the place is still clean and being taken care of but at a little more cost-effective standards.”

HELP IS NEEDED

On the May 6 primary ballot, Austintown will ask for a renewal of its current expense general fund levy, first passed in 1976. D’Apolito said the levy is for 0.6 mills and generates $166,000 a year for the general fund.

“It’s a fraction of the general fund but very important to maintaining our operations, especially in light of the police levy not passing,” he said. “In order to keep the police department operating without any major operational changes, we have had to transfer from the general fund to the police department in an amount greater than the general fund is receiving.”

Before his time at the helm ended, Gavalier worked to cut about $200,000 from the department’s roughly $7 million budget, through overtime and training cuts, contract cancellations, not purchasing new police vehicles, and other measures.

Trustees said, in campaigning for last year’s police levy, that cutting the $1.3 million it needed would simply not be practical, or even possible. That wasn’t good enough for voters, who defeated the township’s bid for a 2.2-mill police levy in November. The levy would have generated $2.3 million for the police department, and would cost homeowners $84 per $100,000 of property value.

D’Apolito is hopeful that May’s general fund levy renewal will be more successful and the township and department will not take what he has described as a catastrophic hit.

He said he, Delmont and trustees have had discussions about what the department and township need to do, and they are taking steps toward cutting more and trying to bring in more money.

Delmont said that over the past several years the department has reduced staff through attrition from about 45 officers to 36, and none of those who have left recently will be replaced.

D’Apolito said the department also will seek another COPS grant through the U.S. Department of Justice. In September, the township applied for and won renewal of a $750,000 COPS grant that supports the salaries of six officers.